My friend Holly and I spent last week making centerpieces for our church women’s conference. What an undertaking! We had 20 round tables, 3 food tables, and 2 registration tables to decorate. Our theme was “In this life I shall have joy,” and the colors were magenta and yellow. I wanted to think beyond standard bouquets, so I searched the web for springtime centerpiece ideas. When I saw these moss centerpieces at The Handiwork Chronicles, I became obsessed with moss.

We wanted the centerpieces to be as natural and earthy as the inspiration photos, so we used a burlap fabric overlay, logs, and rocks. We added the “joy” flags and bright mums to bring in color. We wanted to use what Moss Mountain calls cupcake moss, also known as pillow moss or cushion moss. But heavy snow storms on the East Coast delayed its availability. So we bought the next best thing: a mixture of cupcake moss and mood moss, also known as bear fur moss, from Patrick’s Floral Studios. Mood moss grows in larger clumps than cupcake moss, but it worked well enough for our purposes.

I own blue and white dishes. Normally this isn’t a problem—until I try to find a cute tablecloth that looks good with my dishes. Apparently, blue as a kitchen or dining color has been out for several seasons. The market is flooded with red, green, and aqua. Instead of waiting for blue to come back in, I took matters into my own hands. First I checked the standard tablecloth size for my 36- x 60-inch table. Turns out, a 60- x 84-inch cloth fits tables 36 x 60 to 48 x 72. Then I found this lovely blue indoor/outdoor fabric at Fabric.com. At 56 inches wide, I figured it would work fine because my table was on the smaller end of that range. After that, hemming the fabric and adding pom-pom trim was a cinch. Final dimensions (pom-pom to pom-pom): 57 x 81 inches. Read more »

Our new guest nester, Maria Romvari, transformed this corner of her house for her Hungarian blog A Hoover-gáton is túl, and she’s sharing her tutorial with us! Maria used ordinary thrift store items—side table, vase, and mismatched frames—totaling $10.67 to create this stunning vignette. Another $17.75 spent on paint, primer, and a brush bring the total to less than $30. Add some of her own photos and candle holders, and she was ready to start the transformation. Maria loves the clean, fresh look of white (a girl after my own heart!), but her husband wasn’t keen on the idea (he said white reminds him of hospitals), so he suggested staining the tabletop. It all came together beautifully, don’t you think? Read more »

My friend Julie Chai (watch her videos here) at Sunset magazine gave me this lamp base as a project. Southwest isn’t my style, plus it had rusty hardware and a tattered, taped cord. I adore Jill Rosenwald’s lamps from Maine Cottage, but they’re out of my price range. So I decided to rewire and paint this table lamp instead. I got a bit carried away with all the flowers (in eight different shades of green/blue), but it was so darn fun! All the supplies I had on hand, which would make the lamp practically free—except I got soaked on the $50 lampshade. It still beats $425, though. In the end, my favorite part was the super inexpensive DIY round finial. Read more »

My sister Christy came up with this super easy idea—and I love it. Even better: I had all the supplies on hand. No, I don’t drink wine, but I have plenty of friends who do. They saved their corks for a big project I have planned. I could spare a few for this trivet. You can make these any size or shape you want. They’d also be great as coasters. Read more »